


The pains of feeling useless

by PotterWhoLockLin



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:36:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotterWhoLockLin/pseuds/PotterWhoLockLin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Sort of) missing scene from His Last Vow. Sherlock is shot and John goes with him to the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The pains of feeling useless

John heard the bang, and he ran up the stairs. He didn't know who had been shot (or indeed, who had fired the gun), but gut instinct told him that he had to get up there. Fast.  
He arrived at the top of the stairs and, gasping slightly (not as fit as he once was), wheeled round and charged towards the door that he knew Sherlock was behind. Just before he pulled open the door, he glimpsed a swish of black disappearing round a corner. He dismissed it. He had to get to Sherlock.  
He yanked the door open, and the first thing that he took in was Sherlock, lying on his back. He looked...dead.  
John rushed over, and knelt down beside him. He remembered wryly the last time he had done this, in Irene Adler's room. But this time was different. Sherlock wasn't reacting. He gently patted his face.  
"Sherlock?" he said. "Sherlock?"  
He bent right over Sherlock's head and put an ear to his mouth. No breath. Oh god. No. Breath.  
"Can you hear me?" he said, a little more frantically.  
He heard a rustle, and he looked up to see Magnussen, who was pulling himself upright. "What happened?" he demanded.  
"He got shot," Magnussen replied weakly.  
"Jesus..." John flipped open Sherlock's coat to reveal blood that stained the white shirt that Mrs Hudson had hung up that very morning. A hell of a lot of blood.  
"Sherlock!" he exclaimed in horror. This couldn't be happening. Sherlock never got hurt, not even on their most dangerous of cases. It was almost like being back in Afghanistan. "Oh my..."  
He reached into his pocket for his phone, simultaneously turning round to Magnussen. "Who shot him?"  
Magnessen did not reply, and John turned away. He had to call an ambulance.  
"Emergency. Which service do you require?"

The paramedics arrived unusually fast. John was still compressing the obscene hole in Sherlock's chest when they arrived with a stretcher. They loaded him on and, with John at their side, they raced down to the waiting ambulance.  
Both of them were carefully loaded in, and immediately the paramedics began to perform their lifesaving work. John sat near his head, feeling slightly helpless. A paramedic ripped open Sherlock's shirt, and another strapped an oxygen mask to his face.  
"Sherlock," John said, trying to make his friend hear him. "We're losing you. Sherlock?"  
He could've sworn he saw an eyelid flicker briefly.

John wasn't allowed into the operating room - instead, a surgeon came out periodically to give him updates.  
The surgeon came out looking rather hopeless.  
"He's flat-lining."  
John put his head in his hands. Dead. Again.  
Sherlock's voice drifted through John's mind. "Killing me? That's so two years ago."  
If only.  
The surgeon rushed back into the waiting room again.  
"He's made it. My god. He came back without resuscitation, CPR, anything. Your friend has done the impossible, Dr Watson!"  
John stared at the surgeon's retreating back. He sounded a tad delirious. 

John was allowed in to see Sherlock soon after. Mycroft had, apparently, already been to check on his little brother. He sat down by his side. Sherlock was surrounded by continuously beeping instruments, and was hooked up to all of them in some way. He didn't look...the same. Heart monitors were wired to his chest, drips were fed into his arms and a nasal cannula was on his face. Sherlock stirred the tiniest bit, and breathed a word. A single word. John bent in slightly to listen.  
"Mary."  
John leaned back in his chair. What? 

Various people came in to visit Sherlock, and John was always there in the background. There was a rather peculiar incident where John had come in to find a rose on the table and the window open. Sherlock was smiling slightly.  
His condition had improved dramatically, but it was nearly impossible to have a half-way decent conversation with him, due to the morphine. He had a tendency to fall asleep two minutes into the subject, or to lose track of what he was saying.  
John didn't mind.  
He took Greg Lestrade up up to Sherlock's room when he had deemed Sherlock to at least be vaguely lucid, as Greg had insisted on getting a witness statement.  
"Dunno how much sense you'll get out of him. He's drugged up, so he's pretty much babbling," John said. He heard a beep and looked back at Greg, who appeared to be doing something on his phone. "Oh, they won't let you do that in here, you know."  
"No, I'm not going to use the phone. I just want to take a video."  
They grinned at each other, and John opened the door.  
The bed was empty.  
The window was open.  
Sherlock was gone.  
"Oh Jesus," John sighed.  
He seemed to say that a lot these days.


End file.
